Author Archive

When my hands were at the pinnacle of having issues and very painful (mini update: seeing yet ANOTHER doctor at the end of January, and being started on Prednisone in the interim), Brade and I picked up a few board games so that we’d continue to have an interactive activity to do together. From there, we have spent many nights enjoying “game night” unplugged. And I love it!

We have spent many an evening playing games with just the two of us. We’ve also been working to set up a semi-regular game night with several different groups of friends, and have met some new and fun people in the process. I often fretted and worried about what I would do when I decided it was time to send Beru to Nagrand and log out of WoW permanently – would I have any social connections, would I be bored out of my skull, would I become a cranky old lady who reads books and watches my “shows”. However, I am happy to say that many of the experiences that I’ve had since re-introducing myself to the tabletop game genre have not only been overwhelmingly positive, but have also reminded me that a lot of people who don’t play wow continue to have a lot of fun and don’t all become cranky old ladies who whistle through their dentures while shaking their cane at those crazy kids these days (/gasp!).

We are also very fortunate in that we have an amazing game store locally where we can window shop, and even try out games before we buy them. While games tend to be slightly more expensive here, there is something to be said for the environment found in a game store. It’s hard to really describe, but there is just something…energetic and intriguing about it. One of the things that the shop closest to us does is have a “free play” night on Friday nights where the store is open until midnight and you can go in and just enjoy the games – and even ask one of the store personnel to teach you how to play (one of the other stores has a Munchkin Saturday Night – and has someone from the Munchkin team that comes and teaches people how to play). While we’ve not taken advantage of this as much as I’d like, it’s definitely on our list of “Friday Evening Activites”. Read the rest of this entry »

The great monk Nerf has occurred – and it’s pretty much done jack and shit for the current state of the Resto Druid. Our toolkit problems continue to be reflected in our output in 25s. And, honestly, with Blizzard indicating they feel we are “fine” I’m running out of energy – and feel a bit like I’m wasting my time – continuing to try and show we continue to struggle and have problems.

Here is the breakdown over the past few weeks.

Since this is the fourth time we’ve taken a look at this, with no indication that our life is going to improve, I feel I don’t have much left to say on the topic.

Our Monk overlords have been summarily replaced with disc priests. The monk nerfs were steep (maybe too steep), and the bubble lords swooped in and have mitigated their way into the position formally held by monks. Mushrooms still suck. Our healing model still does not work well in the world of MoP healing. Our fixed mana pools still do not support the toolkit we have to work with. And well, that’s about all I have to say on the matter.

If I hadn’t devoted the past eight years to the Druid class, I would seriously be considering a reroll at this point (and have, in fact, given it consideration). But I don’t feel that I should have to give up a class I’ve put so much energy into, and enjoyed for so long. I pretty strongly feel it should be Blizzard’s responsibility to make sure that classes are fun to play. That they are equally competitive, that they have tools suitable to meet that goal, and that players can continue to feel like viable assets of their raid team and enjoy the game based on skill rather than be frustrated because of artificial limitations set by the game.

But maybe that’s just me.

Please feel free to review the prior three posts in the series for more in depth looks at the problem and potential solutions.

One of the things that I have learned in the past few months is that I am a Katy Perry fan. It all started with her movie. I have always been a fan of documentary type things, such as Behind the Music and True Hollywood Story, so it was no real surprise that I was interested in this movie. I’d heard a few of her songs on the radio, and found them catchy. I’d always thought she had spunk. But upon watching this documentary, I decided that I actually really like Katy Perry.

I’m sure you are wondering if this post has anything to do with WoW. And it does. I’ll get there. But even if I didn’t, I’d point out that this is my blog and if I wanted to do a post that did nothing but talk about how I decided I was a Katy Perry fan, that’s my right. Fortunately for you, I do have some points that don’t involve Katy Perry.

Anyhow. The reason I bring up Katy Perry here is because she has a song that I really, really like the message. It’s called Part of Me – and it basically talks about (at least my interpretation, anyhow) being true to yourself and remembering that nobody can take a part of you, unless you let them. This resonates with me for many reasons – but largely because I’ve grown to the point in my life where I am pretty happy with who I am. I am pretty comfortable with myself, and well aware of both how things make me feel, as well as my likes and dislikes.

As another two weeks have passed, it is time to take another look at how Druids are faring in this tier or content. Since we’ve already talked quite a bit about why we are having problems, and how it needs to be fixed, I’m not going to elaborate a whole lot more on that. This is partly becaue the new charts show some interesting things, and I have a few other things I want to discuss.

Let’s start with what the numbers tell us. As a reminder, I am only evaluating how Druids are performing in a 25 man raid content because this is my raid setting. If you are raiding 10s and rocking it, good on you! Go on with your bad self.

25 Normal

In looking at these numbers, you can see that Druids are still rolling along at the bottom. Disc priests have soared as they received buffs and starting gaining familiarity with their toolkit. Paladin and shaman seem to have plateaued, while Druids continue to struggle with the same problems we have since release. Aside from priests, not much has appreciably changed since our last look.

I had intended to work on the post giving a third look at the state of Druid healing, but when I opened my email this morning, there was a note from the photographer letting me know that our pictures were ready. So you are getting wedding pictures instead. Out of the massive file that was sent, I managed to find a few that I liked! I’m sure that we are all our own worst critic, and that Brade will like different ones than I do, but the ones below we’re amongst my favorites. It was a very lovely (albeit Seattle rainy) day – and in the end, I suppose that I am happy we ultimately decided to hire a photographer.

While I am still quite disappointed with the state of druid healing, I thought I’d take a bit of a break on my continuing evaluation on the state of resto druids to talk about something else today. Progression. (Don’t worry, I do have a two week follow up coming this week and I will get back to it, I just need to talk about other things for a bit). I’ve had a few people ask me how we decided to approach progression this tier, so I thought I’d go ahead and give a few thoughts on our decisions with regards to progression as a guild for this unwieldy first tier in the expansion.

However, before I get to that, I thought I’d spend a few sentences talking about something else that is related in a tertiary fashion and has been on my mind: the T14 gating.

When the gating was announced, I remember being very excited about it because the amount of content being released as T14 was staggering in the number of encounters presented, and subsequently overwhelming. I still like that there was gating for it, but it the execution of this particular gating was a little…clunky. Which, in turn, means that I didn’t care for how this content was gated. What ultimately happened was that when Mogu’shan Vaults was released there was a large period of time before the next zone was released. This meant that your above average guild was able to clear the zone, and then subsequently work on a few heroics while waiting for the new content. However, when the new content released, you stopped your heroic progression push to clear the new normal mode zones – and then two weeks later had another new zone to tackle. And then, only after that, would your progression push be back to heroics.

The problem I had with this was that the long period of gating with the first raid disjointed what is normal progression, that is to say that most people would push all of their normal mode content and then start heroics once that was cleared. And I’d wager a fair bet that most heroics are tuned with the expectation of having gear from all three of the zones. This meant that everything with progression was just thrown off by the awkward way that the content was presented. In hindsight, I wish that the gating was more fluid and smooth or that heroic content was approached differently. Should Blizzard opt to gate content this way again, I hope that they make that decision from the outset of the development of the content so that progression isn’t quite as disjointed.

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